Praise the Lord for the student camps! Having grown up in the church life, I’ve been to many student camps before but this one was by far the most enjoyable ever! It was great to out in the middle of nowhere on a high mountain enjoying the Lord with fellow students and believers in the Lord. It was a weekend for us all to get beside ourselves and be crazy for the Lord.
The subject of this camp was Christ as our Salvation in the book of Exodus. The book of Exodus is a book on Salvation, Provision, Revelation and Building. In this camp we covered the first point on salvation.
In the first message, we saw that Egypt is a type of the world. The world is a system created by Satan to distract and usurp us from the enjoyment of the Lord. God desires to get us out of Egypt and get us into the wilderness. In Egypt, God cannot gain us for His building, there is too much distracting us for His purpose. God desires for us to come out of Egypt and into the wilderness to hold a feast unto Him, and build up the tabernacle, God’s dwelling place.
To do this, He first had to expose the world and everything that the world is. The way He exposed the world is by sending the ten plagues. God sovereignly allowed Pharaoh’s heart to be hardened in order to expose the world to the full. If I was Pharaoh, I would have given up after the first plague and would have let God’s people go but Pharaoh lasted until the tenth plague. The ten plagues were divided into 4 groups.
- The blood, frogs, and lice – exposed the natural fallen life of man. The result of living in the world is just death.
- Flies, pestilence, and boils deal with the atmosphere of the world. The air of the world is dirty and filled with unclean things.
- Hail, locusts, and darkness deal with the principles and nature of the world. After the first group dealt with the earth and the second group with the heavens, the third group had to deal with everything else that was left behind.
- The slaying of the firstborn portrays that everything related to Adam is condemned by God.
I really enjoyed this story as child because I was always happy that the Egyptians “lost in the end” and that they deserved to be punished. The Lord refreshed my vision that not only were the Egyptians punished but God also used to plagues to expose the world! We need to have a fresh appreciation toward God once we see what the world really is. The world can be anything that distracts us from God. It can be computers, friends, cars, clothes and even as subtle as our studies. Anything that distracts us from God is part of the world system.
We need to realize and even ask the Lord to send plagues our way to expose the world. Once we see what the world really is, we would have no desire to stay in the world but leave. In Egypt there is everything but God, while in the wilderness there is nothing but God. We need to see this! Outwardly the world is “very satisfying”. Egypt was of leeks, garlic and onion, pleasant to the human taste. Ultimately it just kills us.
To get out of the world, we need to cross the Red Sea – a symbol of baptism. It is not easy for us to get out. The Israelites were chased by Pharaoh and his chariots. The enemy knows we want to get out and he will not let us go. It is a fight to get out. Do not be surprised if you have to fight for your baptism. It is normal to have fight before you get baptized. However, once you cross the Red Sea, the sea closes and Hallelujah: you cannot go back! Once we believe in the Lord, we should realize that we are no longer a part of the world. Our baptism is a sign and declaration that we are free from the world. Once we make this exodus out of Egypt into the wilderness, we are now free to hold a feast unto our Lord and build up His dwelling place!
May the Lord continue to expose the world to us that we may eventually have no desire to stay in the world but just get out of the world and hold a feast unto Him! [sharing from brother Kyle H(South Africa) from his top enjoyment in the recent Student Camp they had there]
